so the problem is this.
I, as a GM, want to use skills in a similar way to rolling on a random table when the outcome of an action is in doubt or hard to eyeball fairly. Like, making a skill roll and rolling on a reaction table serve basically the same function. They're a tool to decide the narrative at certain junctures, not a tool to control the fiction with.
This is, I think, how D&D was meant to be played originally. You say what you're doing, the GM tells you what happens. Dice come out in combat because its often hard for the the GM to be 'fair' about that since character death is on the cards. Similarly, saves used a dice roll so that when a player says 'but the poison needle can't kill me, I'm wearing gloves!' you can roll some dice to resolve it quickly rather than arguing about the penetrating power of a needle on a spring vs some leather. The point is that you only bring them out when a sensible judgement is difficult.

Players tend to want to use skills to be able to concretely Do A Thing. The intent when a player says they want to roll a skill is to apply a mechanic in such a way as to fix the fiction in place. IE 'it HAS to be this way because the Dice n Rules say I SUCCEEDED'. Why is this?
I think it boils down to the fact that lots of GMs are bad. If a player is constantly getting railroaded ('the goblin snuck up on you and stole your magic arrows, cross them off your sheet') or has a GM that likes to kill them arbitrarilly ('you didn't say you looked before crossing the street, you get hit by a car and die lol') and that makes them powerless, which is just not fun. So pointing at the dice to say to the gm 'no, actually you can't just make me fail' becomes a defense mechanism against getting screwed.

*****

Personally, I tend to run it as 'roll a d20 and hope it's under the relevant stat' whenever it becomes relevant. Thieves with their thief skills (and other classes with similar abilities) get to roll two d20s and pick the better result. It's simple enough, and only needs to come out when there's actual doubt. IE, if you hide and there's cover, you hide automatically. If the monsters start looking for hidden enemies, do they find where you've gone? Roll to find out.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;9864141. I want a comprehensive skill list.

2. I don't want skills with a lot of overlap, particularly if the system expects you to roll both to accomplish generally unified tasks. (Hide/Move Silently or Listen/Spot in 3E being key examples.)

3. In D&D, I want the things I can do with my skills to progress commensurately with my other abilities. Yes, a 10th level Rogue with a maxed out Balance skill and a magical artifact boosting that skill even higher should be able to race across treetops like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. And a 20th level one is a demigod who should be able to balance on a wisp of cloud.

4. Skills should not play the game for the players. Simply shouting out the name of a skill ("I used Diplomacy on it!") is not acceptable. (But this is generally not a mechanical issue; it's just the GM displaying a bare minimum amount of competence.)

Agreed, one of my major beefs with 3e is the players would not roleplay or describe in detail what they do while using the skill. A specific example being;

Player: "I go into town and use my Gather Information skill (rolling a d20) to find out what time the castle guards change shifts, ...so we can sneak in in disguise as part of the new guard shift to steal the Dukes Gemstones and Jewelery.

Me (GM): "Wait, ...What? Who, exactly did you talk to, ...and what exactly did you ask them?"

Player: "Doesn't matter... I rolled a 14, with my +7 skill I got a 21 and know what time the guards will change shifts. We are going in at that time..."


For the GM how this happens is really important because who the players ask in town may or may not elect to tip off or alert the town guardsmen as to whether they are being scouted out. If the guards become aware, they'll set an ambush. ...If, for example they are asking a member of the local thieves guild instead, the guild may use the information that the players are planning a break-in  to arrange an op or two of their own which may or may not be related to what the players are doing. All of these roleplaying opportunities lost though if the player simply rolls a d20 and is informed "Oh, the local bartender says the releived guards show up at 9 PM after their shift every day."

What happens the next time? Are the guards forever on the 9PM shift change?,... and how do we add or change to the roleplaying for that if and when the players need to sneak into the stronghold a second time, or for some other completely unrelated reason?

Having the players actually role-playing what is happening is a bit of work, this gives the GM many more opportunities to add to, or change details about the situation, on-the-fly, and makes for a much more dynamic, and immersive game.

I think 0D&D Chargen should include an option for automatically adding and maintaining skills and specially trained abilities. The players should have to regularly practice their skills to retain proficiency, and there should be a way to add new skills with a boost or bonus to existing skills provided whenever the character levels until maximum proficiency is reach with a skill. For the record, with a +10 on a d20 roll, a player automatically has a 50% base chance of success. I would argue that maximum proficiency would be 5x whatever the Skills Ability Attribute is. Let's say the player has to pick the Ability used for the skill and for this example elects to use Wisdom for Blacksmithing for example, and he has a wisdom of 14, which would mean he would be successful whenever he rolled a 14 or less rolling a d20, or using percentile dice, Otto would have a base chance of 70% to successfully craft or repair a sword or armor provided Otto has the necessary supplies to complete the job as well as the time.

When the game begins right at character generation the player for Otto the Fighter states that young Otto had spent his formative years working as an apprentice for his uncle, a Blacksmith and is adept at forging swords and crafting armor. The player should be granted that skill with a +4 skill bonus modifier to favor the player whenever he uses that skill. This means that Otto would be able to subtract 4 from his d20 skills check roll (he has to roll under his wisdom to succeed, or his percentile roll success chance is increased by +4 (or 20%) so that anytime he rolled a 90 or less, Otto would be able to successfully craft or repair a sword or armor.

After their first adventures in the dungeon, Otto then returns to town with three hundred and seven gold pieces, as well as fifty seven silver pieces earned, with two 50 Gp Emeralds. He spends about fifty gold buying a new anvil, Five gold for twenty iron ingots, Fifty gold for twenty steel ingots, Five gold for the brick and mortar to build his own forge, A steel hammer 3 Gp, Backsmiths Iron Tongs 1 Gp, 100 Iron or Copper Jump rings 1 Sp (a set of full chainmail requires 300 rings) 50 steel jump rings 1 Gp, 100 Lb of soft coal 5 Gp, A Bellow 5 Gp, A Quenching Bucket 5 Cp, Three barrels, two for quenching, one to store rings.

So here is his basic outlay to startup the Smithy;
Anvil 50 Gp
x20 Steel Ingots 50 Gp
x20 Iron Ingots 5 Gp
Forge 5 Gp
Steel Smiths Hammer 3 Gp
Iron Smiths Tongs  1 Gp
600 Iron Rings 3 Sp
600 Copper Rings 3 Sp
600 Steel Rings 12 Gp
100 Lb. of soft Coal 5 Gp
A Bellow 5 Gp
A Quenching Bucket 5 Cp
Three Barrels 3 Gp
Ball Peen Hammer 2 Gp
Flat Peen Hammer 2 Gp
Large Sledgehammer 5 Gp
Small Sledgehammer 2 Gp

Total: 151 Gp 6 Sp, 5 Cp

Now Otto spent about a week building his Smithy, and he has one more week before the adventurers are scheduled to depart, so he starts with a steel sword. This is going to take three weeks to craft. First the blade needs to be forged, Then a steel pommel created and attached, and last the handle/grip has to be attached and fashioned. He makes his smithing roll for his first week and rolls a 4 on a d20. Being proficient he needs an 18 or less to succeed, and Huzzah!! manages to heat and hammer two steel ingots out into about a twenty-six inch flat blade with two rough edges.

Otto leaves his work and goes on another adventure, and comes back a month later with a couple hundred additional gold. He has two weeks to work in his blackmith shop before the group departs again. He works the pommel on the second week rolling a 1 CRITICAL SUCCESS for a roll under roll, so this will be a masterwork or +1 Sword with an exceptional well crafted Pommel. During the last week he affixes a leather wrapped wooden handle just about a foot long to the end of the blade just above the counter-weight. On his final skills check he rolls an 11, So three successes and a masterworked longsword is the result. This is good for 150 Experience points, and he can now sell the sword for 10 Gp if he wants or trade the sword to another party member for some other treasure...

If a skill fails the sword crafting materials is lost. If he critically fails, then he fumbles and harms himself during the crafting or....the item is crafted, but there is a hidden defect or vulnerability, or maybe the item is cursed with a -1 hit probability or does 1 less damage than normal.

...and so it goes. Skills. done. the. right. way. makes the game go waaaaay better, both for the skill user, and for everyone else playing. ...If you do it right. Most GMs are too lazy though.

Also, welcome to the RPGSite cavegirl!

Quote from: GameDaddy;986533Agreed, one of my major beefs with 3e is the players would not roleplay or describe in detail what they do while using the skill. A specific example being...

Pretty sure his point was that this is not a question of systems but GMing.

Quote from: Voros;986536Pretty sure his point was that this is not a question of systems but GMing.

Agreed, even in the most wargamish of RPGs (like D&D 4e) I was able to make it work by insisting players describe first, roll second. And if they didn't do that I would negate the roll, have them pick it up then  give me a description afterward they can now roll. They learn quickly after losing a critical result.

Quote from: cavegirl;986450so the problem is this.
I, as a GM, want to use skills in a similar way to rolling on a random table when the outcome of an action is in doubt or hard to eyeball fairly. Like, making a skill roll and rolling on a reaction table serve basically the same function. They're a tool to decide the narrative at certain junctures, not a tool to control the fiction with.
This is, I think, how D&D was meant to be played originally. You say what you're doing, the GM tells you what happens. Dice come out in combat because its often hard for the the GM to be 'fair' about that since character death is on the cards. Similarly, saves used a dice roll so that when a player says 'but the poison needle can't kill me, I'm wearing gloves!' you can roll some dice to resolve it quickly rather than arguing about the penetrating power of a needle on a spring vs some leather. The point is that you only bring them out when a sensible judgement is difficult.

Players tend to want to use skills to be able to concretely Do A Thing. The intent when a player says they want to roll a skill is to apply a mechanic in such a way as to fix the fiction in place. IE 'it HAS to be this way because the Dice n Rules say I SUCCEEDED'. Why is this?
I think it boils down to the fact that lots of GMs are bad. If a player is constantly getting railroaded ('the goblin snuck up on you and stole your magic arrows, cross them off your sheet') or has a GM that likes to kill them arbitrarilly ('you didn't say you looked before crossing the street, you get hit by a car and die lol') and that makes them powerless, which is just not fun. So pointing at the dice to say to the gm 'no, actually you can't just make me fail' becomes a defense mechanism against getting screwed.

I think that's a pretty compelling analysis*. Certainly the first parts (to a DM dice checks exist to adjudicate situations that are unclear in their outcome where a GM would be challenged to be consistently fair, to a player skills exist to define player capability within a rules framework). I'm not sure that the DMs even have to be bad** for this to work. I think that players, in a game where uncertainty (both in the dice, and what is around the next corner, want an ability to influence the certainty of the situation. What's the old adage of early dungeon-crawling--You want to make sure you never enter combat unless the outcome is a foregone conclusion? A player can't pre-emptively set up the situation such that they will win***, but they can preemptively arrange their skills, attributes, equipment, or whatever else the game provides such that when they run into the next unexpected situation, they will have the best possible odds of coming out alive/unscathed/successful at the end. It's giving them a sense of agency, and control over their fate. It might be a false sense (in that, if the skill system were not there, they and the GM would have to battle-of-creativity it out, and they might have better chances there), but that sense of preemptive control over the situation is a tempting one, and not just in games.  
*As this thread shows, there's also interest in using skills as a way to differentiate between characters, but that's a separate issue.
**Or rather, every player having played under a bad GM at some point, which incentivized a preference.
***Well, they can by good information gathering, planning, etc. And there is an argument that can (and has) be made that adding game-mechanical solutions to problems disincentivizes player ingenuity.

Quote from: GameDaddy;986533Agreed, one of my major beefs with 3e is the players would not roleplay or describe in detail what they do while using the skill. A specific example being;

Who running the session? Are the books exerting enough mind control on you that you can't utter "Pick up the dice and describe to me what you are doing and then roll."?

Quote from: cavegirl;986450so the problem is this.
I, as a GM, want to use skills in a similar way to rolling on a random table when the outcome of an action is in doubt or hard to eyeball fairly. Like, making a skill roll and rolling on a reaction table serve basically the same function. They're a tool to decide the narrative at certain junctures, not a tool to control the fiction with.

One alternative is to ignore the rules, tell the players to think of themselves actually there as their character with their character's abilities and describe to you what they are doing. Then you decide which combination of rolls (using the system as a guide of course) is needed. Or whether any roll is needed because it makes sense that the action immediately succeeds or fails.

I seen a lot of RPGs built around what I call a "cute" dice trick and totally miss the point of why we have skill levels and skill rolls in the first place. My recommendation is to focus on the following

1)How to effectively get the players describe what they are doing in a way that is fun and quick.
2)Assemble the tools and technique you need to come up with a series of rolls to determine what happens with the results are not certain.
3) While keeping in mind the possibility of allowing for extreme success and extreme failure.

If player say "I'm going to use my DIPLOMACY skill" and just roll the dice...

one night have them all play DIPLOMACY, the game.

Quote from: cavegirl;986450Personally, I tend to run it as 'roll a d20 and hope it's under the relevant stat' whenever it becomes relevant. Thieves with their thief skills (and other classes with similar abilities) get to roll two d20s and pick the better result. It's simple enough, and only needs to come out when there's actual doubt. IE, if you hide and there's cover, you hide automatically. If the monsters start looking for hidden enemies, do they find where you've gone? Roll to find out.

I like this.  Simple is good.   But with this method, do your Thieves get better with their thief skills as they increase in level?

Quote from: Crusader X;986817I like this.  Simple is good.   But with this method, do your Thieves get better with their thief skills as they increase in level?

They don't. It's a kludge but I've not really found a better option: perhaps roll the attribute check and the thief skill and if either succeeds, you succeed.

Quote from: Crusader X;986817I like this.  Simple is good.   But with this method, do your Thieves get better with their thief skills as they increase in level?

Depends on the rest of the system. One of the early Gamma Worlds was roughly B/X, but as you went up in level you rolled to see what benefit you got, and one of them was +1 stat (roll randomly). I've long thought about creating a OSR-style game (for my group, no publishing interest), where the tactical value of stats was roughly oD&D-esque, but you gained attributes slowly as you levelled, and used those to fuel a polymath skill system.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;986589If player say "I'm going to use my DIPLOMACY skill" and just roll the dice...

one night have them all play DIPLOMACY, the game.

I always liked Kingmaker as well, with four or five players, ...very interesting!

Quote from: RPGPundit;986317As a whole I think skills are often done badly, even in OSR games.  But I do like having things that make characters diverse from one another.

I think if any of our OSR-non-fans said this, there would be a deafening chorus of "that's what roleplaying is for!" So in fairness, I'll ask, what do you think skill diversification w/c/should do that rp wouldn't?

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;986589If player say "I'm going to use my DIPLOMACY skill" and just roll the dice...

one night have them all play DIPLOMACY, the game.

Or they want to play a campaign as a character that is better than they are at diplomacy. As far I am concerned when this is a factor what I am looking for is the plan and the intent. The diplomacy roll comes after the fact to see how it was executed.

For example in one campaign I had a kid who out of game had a bad stutter. By doing things this way, his character's charisma helped just as it would a players who is a smooth talker out of game. However isn't a good roll in the world that will fix an idiotic idea or plan something that kid (and others) quickly learned when they tried to rely on skill rolls in my campaigns.

For me this approach fixes a who lot of issues when players have characters that are better or worse they are out of game.

Quote from: estar;987302Or they want to play a campaign as a character that is better than they are at diplomacy. As far I am concerned when this is a factor what I am looking for is the plan and the intent. The diplomacy roll comes after the fact to see how it was executed.

For example in one campaign I had a kid who out of game had a bad stutter. By doing things this way, his character's charisma helped just as it would a players who is a smooth talker out of game. However isn't a good roll in the world that will fix an idiotic idea or plan something that kid (and others) quickly learned when they tried to rely on skill rolls in my campaigns.

For me this approach fixes a who lot of issues when players have characters that are better or worse they are out of game.

If you want players to have characters who are more socially adept than themselves without them using their Diplomacy skills as a crutch give them social skills that give the more information or other side advantages about the people they're interacting with. Removing the fog of war in social interaction is enormously helpful. Skills like:
-Detect lies.
-Smell fear.
-Etiquette (you get to have the DM warn you if you're about to do something that'd piss people off).
-Genealogy (knowing the baron's family history is very helpful).

So the guy with no social skills sees a noble.

The guy with social skills sees the Baron Alard of North Haven who loves hunting and who lost his wife in a fire last year who lies whenever he's talking about her.

The second guy is going to have a big advantage but what he's getting is information not the ability to say "I use diplomacy on the guy."